Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE (2024)

Starring Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn, Lola Peploe, Alice Butaud, Roman Angel, Laurence Pierre, Alyzée Soudet, Rodrigue Pouvin, Nina Hédin, Frederick Wiseman and Pierre-François Garel.

Screenplay by  Laura Piani.

Directed by Laura Piani.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 94 minutes. Rated R.

Romantic comedy as a genre has taken some lumps in recent years, so it’s a nice surprise that this French / British rom com turns out to be so winning. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a savvy mix of old-fashioned drawing room romance and modern sensibilities, and the mix works surprisingly well. Then again, the novels of Austen have often been a touchstone for modern comic romances like Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Jane Austen Book Club and Clueless.

The film starts in the historic old Shakespeare and Company bookstore near Notre Dame in Paris – and just spending time in that wonderful old place already put me in a good mood for the story to come.

At the store we meet Agathe (Camille Rutherford), a vaguely neurotic worker at the store. Agathe loves the works of Austen and dreams of proper romance like in one of her novels, however in real life she has somewhat put her life on hold after a physically and mentally bruising automobile accident a few years earlier.

Agathe’s life essentially consists of work, living with her sister and her cute kid, and dreaming of becoming an author herself. She has not been in a car – and thus out of her own strangely constrained life – since the earlier accident. She has a flirty friendship with Felix (Pablo Pauly), one of her co-workers, but it has never gone beyond mere flirtation.

It is Felix who sort of pushes Agathe’s life into gear. After sleeping over with Agathe (chastely, just with a bit of cudding), after a late night, Felix finds and reads Agathe’s latest attempt at a novel. He thinks it shows great promise, but she feels that it is not good enough. Therefore, he submits her work to an annual writing residency at the Jane Austen House museum in Alton, UK – the home where Austen wrote all of her great works. To everyone’s surprise, she is accepted for the program.

Still, Agathe is stuck in her own rut and does not want to go. Eventually, she reluctantly agrees when Felix and her sister insist it will be good for her. (Pretty much everything Agathe does, she does reluctantly.) Therefore she screws on her courage and travels to the British manor. (For the record, the film’s dialogue is mostly in French with subtitles, but has large chunks of English mixed in.)

At the residency, Agathe meets Jane Austen’s great-great-great-grandson, who is an extremely handsome divorcé who gives off a Mr. D’Arcy vibe. Also, on the way to the house, she had a moment with Felix, who shows up at the residency and suddenly seems to be interested as well. Now, suddenly, the woman who has sworn off men has to decide between two of them.

And suddenly Agathe realizes that true love and passion does not go much like a Jane Austen novel at all.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a sweet and charming look at finding love after 30, and it renews my faith in the rom com as a genre.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 23, 2025.